News & Events

AUSTIN – Birth control for insects? It worked in the late 1930s to eradicate a deadly agricultural pest called the screwworm, and it worked again in this century when the screwworm showed up in the Florida Keys. The screwworm had not been seen in the United States for decades when it was found infesting endangered…

Rather than worrying about some far-fetched doomsday scenario akin to Terminator or I, Robot, artificial intelligence researchers are concerned with the real-world dangers presented by modern A.I. In recent years, eminent scientists and intellectuals, including Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have warned of the existential risk entailed by developing advanced artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence researcher Jennifer…

Lack of long-term mental health care for people who are experiencing homelessness can lead to individuals ending up in emergency rooms and, in some cases, prisons. A panel of 17 community members who work in mental health, prisons and community housing programs discussed homelessness, mental health and the criminal justice system on July 11 to…

By Kathryn Cawdrey AUSTIN, Texas —That common grey bird eating out of the neighborhood garbage can may be an indicator of your own health. A researcher at University of California Davis has discovered that pigeons living in New York City get lead-poisoned much as kids do. “Pigeons live in the same areas, eat a lot…

It’s a future version of normal life that we often see intergalactic science fiction films: intelligent extraterrestrial life walking among us as equals. Whether in pop culture or real life, the question of “Are we truly alone in this universe?” still stirs in 2018. A group of scientists presented their research on the future of…

ORLANDO – Stress affects one in five Americans, sending many people to a therapist’s office to address the problem. But what if people could prevent stress on their own? That was the focus of the “Science of Stress” session at the Association of Healthcare Journalists conference on April 20, 2017 led by Dr. Amit Sood. Sood, a professor of medicine at…

By Catherine Wheeler In the United States today, about half a million children ages 1-5 have high blood lead levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Though the number of children with lead poisoning has gone down in recent years, effective policies to prevent lead poisoning remain minimal. Current policy primarily focuses on what happens…